DIARY: A Return to the Old Land

Things may be quiet here for a few days, tomorrow I'm flying home for a two week holiday in Denmark.

It's my first holiday since March, real one anyway, so I'm naturally chuffed. I'll be bartending at the Tønder Festival, and not only that, going to Århus to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday and run the traditional Marselis Run.

Reports to follow!

DIARY: Back from Spain

I wanted to provide you all with a lengthy review of my trip to Madrid, but truth is I'm simply too knackered today, so I'll give you the condensed version! (praise God, I hear you say!)

See all the pictures here.

I'll start by apologising for the poor picture quality, but my ordinary camera is broken, so have to use my camera phone!
Why Madrid?
Well I just love beautiful metropolises. Seriously, though, these were my (alterior as always) motives:

• Visit my old dorm mate Brian!
  
• Cross another country off my "seen" list!

• And most importantly: Watch the Euro qualifier between Spain (booo!) and Denmark (hooray!)

The Trip

Overall, it was a successful trip. Madrid is a beautiful city, the weather was perfect, and the food very very affordable!

On Saturday we spent a great deal of time on Plaza Mayor swarmed by Danish roligans and a few cows (look at the pics for an explanation!). There was football and canned beer everywhere, and thus much rejoicing...

In the late afternoon we ran into "the lads": Jacob, Thomas, and Kristian from work, and our regular football buddies Bisgaard and Kaiser. Let's just say they all looked like they had taken a swim in the nearest Jameson distillary tank before taking off for Madrid!

The Match

Stadium great. Atmosphere, generally good, apart from some animosity from angry young fans a the end. The Spanish were good craic before and after the game, and I didn't get lynched even though I stood up with only Brian at my side and sang the Danish National Anthem amidst some 75.000 Spanish supporters...

End result was a very undeserved 2-1, with both Spanish goals scored when we had three men in defense due to a terrible sending off of Niclas Jensen by the overwhelmed (or bought) Swiss referee (if he's representative of Swiss football, then God help them at the Euro 08).

The players showed fantastic attitude, though, dominated completely until the sending off and managed to press Spain back for most of the second half with just ten men. It was a gutless performance by a lot of the Spanish players, and as much as I like the team, and the technical gifts they possess, they'll crumble at the first hurdle, if they don't improve...

As for our status. Toughest game over, and still one point ahead of Spain. Northern Ireland will drop too many points against the other teams to be a serious challenger for top 2, while Sweden seem likely to run away with one of those spots, having racked up 4 wins without ever lifting their game beyond mediocrity (as usual, but in football, winning badly is a gift that generally means qualification).

If we can take 6 points of the Swedes, and in the belief that the Spanish will get no more than 1 point in Copenhagen, then 1st spot is still a possibility. Realistically, though, we are only slightly better than Sweden, man for man, and 4 points looks like the very maximum we can get out of the next two back-to-back games against our old rivals.

On the other hand, two defeats at the hand of us, and a loss in Spain, could condemn the Swedes to 3rd, still, so a very open group, and the promise of an exciting run-in...

The low....
Well, my wallet got stolen! (lifted!) In a quiet cafe while sitting there with my back against the jacket holding it. A shame we didn't catch the guy in the act, as my friend Brian would surely have relished the opportunity to deal out some vigilante justice and renew his martial arts training.

I lost only a 100 quid, though, and all my cards, but the damage was contained in the end. Anyway, here's hoping the culprit has a nasty run-in with the police very soon....

DIARY: Going to Madrid!

Hi all,

Tomorrow I'm going to Madrid to visit my old dorm mate Brian (below right of Mathilde, who you'll remember I visited a week ago, yep, all the same family!) and (more importantly - sorry Brian!), watch the game: Spain-Denmark (football Euro-qualifiers for the unbelievers amongst you).

I'm hoping for at least a draw, we're one of the best teams in the group (player for player I'd say second-best only to Spain), and are advocates of a great brand of attacking football (sadly rare these days), so I'm hoping for a historically good results against Spain, even if it means eliminating them from the competition (which is a shame since I find that they stand for a much more attacking brand of football than the other teams in our group and I would have like to see them go through in second, but well!).

Well, I'm off to join the army in Red on Plaza Mayor! Till' Then!

DIARY: Canada Trip 1

Well, I've returned from Canada, and now I have also recovered from St. Paddy's weekend! Even though I stayed true to my "max three beverages" rule, Friday was still late (very late!), so I feel slightly below optimal today.

Not too tired to talk about Canada, though. Overall it was a great trip (thanks Mathilde!), here's my day-by-day tale:

DAY 1 - Endless Atlantic Miles and Arrival
I decided to go to bed at 02:00 in the morning, to make it easier to sleep the first night and overcome the -5 hour time difference.

I flew over Amsterdam directly to Montreal, and while the flatlands of Amsterdam always have depressing effect on my mountain-loving soul, everything went great in Schiphol Airport, and the transatlantic flight (my first in a 747) was very pleasant and we were well-fed!

On arrival (around 17:00 local time), I quickly got a bus and then a taxi to Mathilde's apartment close to downtown (that's "city centre" in English) Montreal.

After much hugs and kisses (actually it was more like "a look who's arrived, ready to eat?"), we went for a walkabout and I got reminded was real cold was!!! (temperatures were around -13 degrees Celsius on the first day).

Well you don't mind it too much when you can snuggle into a warm sleeping bag afterwards and have a long exciting week to look forward too!

DAY 2 - Mount Royal & Mathilde's Office

On day 2, we had a long stroll, and our first destination was Mt. Royal (a mighty cliff of 211 metres, the name reminded me of our own Danish "The Sky Mountain" which also stands at a staggering 151m). The mountain has given the name to the city, though, and is actually quite impressive (its much broader than its high!), and offers a spectacular panoramic view over the island of Montreal and the rest of the Monteregian Mountains.

The lowlight was that my camera started malfunctioning because of the low temperature, so I'm gonna have a serious talk with Dell about that! Fuji Cameras surely must tolerate below zero temperatures!

After that we went back "downtown" (YEAH), and Mathilde took me to her office located on the gazzilionth floor in one of those fancy skyscrabers (known as "glasscages" by older Irishmen). I was very impressed, especially with the offices with a view, they don't let you forget that you've reached the top in those places. I wonder how far into the basement you can be demoted....

After that we had lunch with one of her colleagues and I inspected some local outdoor shops (this is part of a "little plan" of mine, but I shall not speak more of that here, shhh...).

The evening introduced me to a little tradition called 5-7 (in French!) where you get two beers for the price of one (a ritual that translates well into all languages). I got a good taste of the local brew (which isn't too bad at all!), and met our designated driver for the weekend trip to the mountains, an Austrian friend of Mathilde's called Christian.

Day 3 - THE BIG DAY

This was the day were would leave for the mountain and forest region North of Montreal. But before that we had another (for me critical!) visit to a huge Canadian Outdoor Shop called Mountain Co-Op.

The centre was just as impressive as I had hoped, and I was blitzing away and recording notes like a madman of the make of this shopping centre while indulging in (WARNING SEXIST REMARK) a shopping spree worthy of any woman (WARNING OFF). All in all I got: 2 trail running socks (one winter, one summer), 1 Sleeping Bag, 1 Compression Bag, 1 Toughskin madras, a bunkload of energy bars (for the trip!), and a balaclava (renamed to "balaclalavala" after lengthy discussion with Mathilde. In Denmark we call it "elephant hood" which is weird since it doesn't feature a snout...).

On our return to Montreal city centre (sorry, downtown, and no, I won't let it go!), we packed up our stuff and got picked up by Christian in a nice big American style convertible.

We then went on to pick up the girls from Ottawa and drove up North through great sceneries of frozen pine forests and densely vegetated hills between which small Christmassy villages were scattered in what seemed like idyllic semi-isolation.

As you can see, the night finished with a nice dinner, a well-lit fireplace and general coziness in a magnificent cabin (I'll put one of those on my "to-buy-when-I-get-rich" list. And before you ask, no plastic surgery is not on that list!!!).

To be continued...